How to get downloaded videos from Opera Cache

Saturday, July 30, 2011 10:21:45 PM

cache, buttons, download, flv, videos

Even though there are already great Opera extensions for downloading YouTube videos (ExtendTube or FastestTube), you may want to get the already watched videos without re-downloading them or download videos from others sites.

Opera usually dumps downloaded videos to cache, unless they are stored in memory only. So you need a quick access to Opera cache folder. Unfortunately, Opera removes files extensions and stores them in folders, so searching for them is hard. There is a way to make it easier, though.
All the files are named in the same way: they start with "opr" and they are saved with .tmp extension.
In Windows Vista you can search the cache folder for "opr" (since all the cached files names start with "opr", Windows Explorer will find them all) and sort the results by size (as video files are usually the biggest). Now you can use VLC player to find the video you need, change the extension from .tmp to .flv.

To make it quick, you can create a button in Opera that not only directs you to the cache folder, but also searches and sorts the files by size. That's how to do it in Windows Vista:

1. Go to Opera cache folder (check opera:about where your cache folder is located),
2. Search for "op"
3. Sort by size descending, so you have the biggest files on top.
4. Select "Save Search" and save it in C:\a\ (or in in your Opera profile %appdata%\Opera\Opera\) with the name "search_cache" (extension .search-ms is selected automatically)
5. Get this button (drag it on your toolbar)
If you saved it in your Opera profile, this button must be updated with correct paths to your folders (C:\Users\your profile name\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera)

Now you can get quickly to the cache folder and have all the cache files sorted by size. You can use now VLC player to play them.


To go further:

1. Assign .tmp files to open with VLC Player or
2. Add this to registry (as a .reg file) to have VLC in the context menu.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Play with VLC]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\Play with VLC\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\VideoLAN\\VLC\\vlc.exe\" \"%1\""

3. Add this registry key (Always Show Extension), so you can easily change .tmp to .flv.

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\tmpfile]
"AlwaysShowExt"="1"

Some video files are not stored in cache. They are stored temporarily in Temp folder. In order to copy them you need to use a program like Unlocker.
To get quickly to the Temp folder you have to change this button:

Button1, "Cache"="Execute program, "explorer", "C:\Users\your profile name\AppData\Roaming\Opera\Opera\search_cache.search-ms", "Cache", "Panel Windows" + Execute program, "explorer", "C:\Users\your profile name\AppData\Local\Temp"

When pressed it goes to the cache folder as in the first example, when pressed and held for a while it goes to the Temp folder.